on a future Earth;
on colonized planets;
among extraterrestrials;
in prehistory.
Poul Anderson wrote one novel set in the Hyperborian Age and another set in Atlantis.
Were there prehistoric civilizations? The Time Patrol would know. Manse Everard could have an entire adventure set in a past but fictional civilization - e.g., in Antarctica?
Could there have been two or three thousand years of cities, empires, languages, literatures, philosophies and religions with a World Teacher or Savior who has been completely forgotten?
There is some alleged evidence and much scope for fiction.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul
I am skeptical there existed in the remote past advanced pre-historic civilizations with a high technology analogous to ours. Because I think we would have found evidence for such things long before now. All the evidence I see points to the history beginning in ancient Mesopotamia, pre-Pharaohnic Egypt, the Indus valley, and the Yellow River of China, being where mankind's FIRST advances leading to what we have now began.
S.M. Stirling, in his three Shadowspawn books, used the premise that a predatory branch of the human race had powers which enabled them to conquer and rule the rest of mankind for roughly 100,000 years. BUT at a low tech level, the Old and New Stone ages. The Shadowspawn described by Stirling were often malevolent, lazy, and no more intelligent, on average, than the rest of mankind.
Sean
Sean,
Two hypotheses:
prehistoric civilizations;
prehistoric civilizations with technologies comparable to ours.
I postulate only the first.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The first might be possible, in the sense of "dawn age" cultures pre-existing the ones in the locations I listed.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
Andre Norton's The Time Traders, 1958 (set in the early 1980s), included a scene in which some of the characters speculated that there'd been a high-tech civilization on Earth in the distant past — because the Russians were using time travel to get their hands on some stuff we couldn't match.
"...But what if there had been an early people who used plastics and brittle alloys, who had no desire to build permanent buildings, whose tools and artifacts were meant to wear out quickly, perhaps for economic reasons? What would they leave us—considering, perhaps, that an ice age had intervened between their time and ours, with glaciers to grind into dust what little they did possess?
"There is evidence that the poles of our world have changed and that this northern region was once close to being tropical. Any catastrophe violent enough to bring about a switch in the poles of this planet might well have wiped out all traces of a civilization, no matter how superior. We have good reason to believe that such a people must have existed...."
It turns out that isn't quite correct....
David,
"The Time Traders" is yet another evocative phrase like "The Crossroads of Time."
Paul.
Paul:
H. Beam Piper wrote a short story, "Crossroads of Destiny," a similarly evocative phrase. It concerned plans for a television program that would explore how history would differ if certain key events differed. The example that drew the narrator into the conversation was ... what if Columbus had gotten the funding for his transatlantic voyage from Henry VII of England?
At the end, the narrator discovers another such turning point to wonder about: what if George Washington had survived the battle of Germantown in 1777, and had been the one who led the Revolutionary Army to victory ... rather than General, and later President, Benedict Arnold?
It's available at Gutenberg Press if you don't feel like buying The Worlds of H. Beam Piper. Although, frankly, I recommend the book.
Kaor, DAVID!
Many thanks for your comments! I can imagine just barely imagine an advanced civilization of the kind you postulated set in the remote past. Esp. if Ice Ages and catastrophes like reversing of the poles led to all remnants of such a civilization being ground into dust and lost.
One objection I thought would be to wonder, if such a civilization of the kind speculated about by Norton in THE TIME TRADERS had existed, wouldn't the need to use huge amounts of oil for both fuels and plastics? Hence, there should have been LESS for us to find and use. But I don't think any signs of that has ever been found.
Hmmm, I do wonder what might have happened if Washington had died at Germantown and been succeeded by Benedict Arnold? As we know, a frustrated and embittered Arnold switched sides in the War of Independence in our timeline!
Sean
With hilarious timing (to my mind, at least), I saw a newspaper headline today:
Could intelligent life have existed on Earth millions of years before humans? Washington Post
Kaor, DAVID!
I frankly distrust most of the "mainstream" media. So, I would expect to find a good deal of twaddle in this Post article. But I might be wrong!
Sean
I too have seen speculation about advanced civilizations in the prehistoric past.
I find it hard to see how they would not leave evidence of their activities from ceramics to mined out ore bodies. However I do see one reasonable exception. This would not be high tech by todays standards, but would be more 'advanced' than any nomadic tribe could be.
An agricultural society would spread over much of the earth and leave evidence where we would find it. A hunter gatherer society dependent on locally rich resources could have fairly impressive structures but not spread greatly. Eg: the pre-European cultures of coastal British Columbia lived permanently near the shore and since they weren't nomadic built large lodges to live in and facilities to make catching salmon easier, or make an area more favorable for shellfish to live.
I could imagine such a society during a recent glacial period living on the shoreline well below current sea level. They would not spread inland to leave evidence where we could easily find it. We might eventually be able to do underwater archeology good enough to find such a culture.
Kaor, Jim!
That too is a theoretical possibility, even tho I remain doubtful.
Your comments reminded me of Anderson's Time Patrol story "The Only Game In Town."
Ad astra! Sean
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